Switching fabric for interfacing a host processor and a plurality of network modules

An information transport system includes a switching fabric that transfers information between network modules and between a host processor and the network modules. The switching fabric includes network module interfaces each associated with one or more network modules. The network module interfaces communicate with each other over a peer transaction bus to allow information to be transferred from one network module to another network module. The switching fabric also includes a processor interface associated with the host processor. The processor interface communicates with the network module interfaces over a host transaction bus to allow information transfer between the host processor and each network module. The peer transaction bus and the host transaction bus separately support routed packet data and peer to peer data transactions in order to prevent one type of transaction from blocking the other and avoid performance dependencies.